Hackers stole up to $1B from banks worldwide, Kaspersky says

A gang of hackers has, over the course of a year or more, stolen up to $1 billion from financial institutions around the world, including some in the U.S., according to a new report by cybersecurity firm Kasperksy Lab.

The Carbanak gang — named after the malware they installed on computers at financial institutions — targeted marks in the U.S., Germany and Asia and possibly elsewhere, according to Kaspersky’s Threatpost blog. Instead of relying on phishing attacks that goes after end-user passwords, they targeted bank employees themselves, sending email messages containing malware that then recorded internal interactions to learn the banks’ procedures and processes, in some cases feeding video back to their mothership.

One reason the payoff may have been so big was that the gang was patient, waiting to make their move for months and also moving on from one bank to another after making their, um withdrawals, typically grabbing up no more than $10 million per institution. In…